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By Gregory Grishchenko
 The tiny pocket tissue sector has been a microcosm of global competition within the tissue industry. Being very popular in Western Europe and Japan, pocket handkerchiefs are slowly gaining recognition in the North American household tissue market. This is still dominated by domestic players, with US and Canadian producers competing for shelf space and providing a wide variety of products at low cost.
However, imported goods in niche sectors such as pocket hankies and car facial tissue continue to appear in the USA, sometimes even defying global trade regulations and raising questions about product dumping.
Currently, the sales for pocket tissues in the USA are flat with about 3% of the total tissue market and the annual growth rate varying from positive to negative 1%.
Foreign pocket tissue makers already have a noteworthy presence in the USA. According to Greol Engineering, a consulting firm from New Jersey, the share of overseas sourced products in this category is reaching 30% in the New York City metropolitan area, being driven by consumer demand and small retailers, while major retail chains, relying on traditional supply channels, carry a single domestic brand, Kleenex® by Kimberly- Clark.
Pocket tissue sold as individual packs in small stores for the price of up to $0.50 a piece, while major retailers sell it in large packages. The Kleenex® eight-pack cube of pocket hankies is the best-known product and sometimes the only item in this category a consumer can find on the shelves of major American supermarkets and pharmacies. Other varieties are being sold by leading pharmacy chains, such as Walgreen’s and CVS, which carry their own private labels and in the packaging closely match Kleenex® in size and count.
The most popular domestic brand, Kleenex® sold by National Wholesale Liquidators (three- store discounter chain in New Jersey) has come from the Kimberly-Clark Pathumtani mill in Thailand. These attractive pocket packs carry various Disney characters and make use of the slogan “Thank goodness for Kleenex® tissues” in English and Thai. A six-pack of Disney two-ply virgin tissue hankies is available for $0.99, making it one the lowest cost products in the segment. The other Kleenex® brands from Brazil and Saudi Arabia come for the same price in six-packs of three-ply virgin tissue. Kimberly-Clark manufactures this product in cooperation with the largest Brazilian pulp producer Klabin and Saudi Arabian company Olayan Kimberly-Clark Arabia.
Small groceries and off-chain pharmacies in the region use supply channels varying from ‘grey market’ sources to internet and offer a wide selection of pocket tissue brands from Europe and Asia. You may find four-ply high quality Tempo brand, Germany’s best known worldwide contribution to pocket tissue. This brand was designed and developed in 1929 by Vereinigte Papierwerke Nürnberg and was later acquired by Procter & Gamble. Tempo’s manufacturing bases in the European Union and China make it available not only in Europe and Asia but, thanks to internet stores and grey market channels, in North America. As a very low cost disposable product, Tempo pocket tissue is an unusual subject of parallel import which occurs mostly with electronics and cigarettes. In Europe’s busy urban areas street vendors sell Tempo pocket tissue single packs everywhere during the winter. Tempo also is probably the only brand in the tissue segment that has been the subject of counterfeiting.
| Pocket Tissue Prices (New York Metropolitan Area - July 2007) |
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Brand |
Manufacturer / Country |
Retail price per pack (US$) |
Property |
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Kleenex® |
Kimberly-Clark, USA |
$0.28-$0.43 |
15/2-ply virgin |
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Kleenex® |
Kimberly-Clark, Brazil |
$0.17 |
10/3-ply virgin |
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Marcal |
Marcal, USA |
$0.34-$0.40 |
10/3-ply recycled |
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Puffs to Go |
Proctor & Gamble, USA |
$0.40 |
12/2-ply virgin |
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Lucky |
Delta, Turkey |
$0.25-$0.30 |
10/3-ply virgin |
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Best |
W.W.S., China |
$0.10 |
10/3-ply virgin |
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Kleenex® |
Kimberly-Clark, EU |
$0.33-$0.48 |
9/3-ply virgin |
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Tempo® Plus |
Proctor & Gamble, EU
(sold to SCA) |
$0.53 |
9/4-ply virgin |
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Kleenex® Disney |
Kimberly-Clark, Thailand |
$0.17 |
10/2-ply virgin |
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Walgreen's |
USA |
$0.29 |
15/2-ply virgin |
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CVS pharmacy |
USA |
$0.49 |
15/2-ply virgin |
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Kleenex® |
Olayan Kimberly-Clark Arabia Company, Saudi Arabia |
$0.17 |
10/3-ply virgin |
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The introduction of Asian-made pocket tissue brands such as Best, Lucky SuperSoft, Lifedays, Sunnie and Top Kleen sold in major US urban markets signals the embracing of a more aggressive segmentation strategy by far-away tissue manufacturers. The rapidly-growing $3.5 billion Chinese tissue industry has created an army of small converters employing 25-100 people. These small enterprises specializing in niche tissue goods are not only principal domestic suppliers but also global exporters. We may not see strong growth figures in pocket tissue imports compared with the flow of other Chinese goods, especially given the previous history of tissue dumping accusations. However, this small example of niche product market development shows quite unexpected global trade patterns in modern times. TW
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